The book „Building Open Source Hardware“ has a really good chapter about licensing Open Source Hardware – the best I‘ve ever read, simple and short. And like my chapter in that book the licensing chapter is published under the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike license 3.0. But there was no publication of it on the web. I searched for it countless times because it is something I wanted to send to people. So I decided to change this and scanned the pages and uploaded the article here.

I scanned the chapter and used the online tool onlineocr.net to turn the images into text.

Download as:

Licensing Open Source Hardware

Michael Weinberg

„Gu’s shoulders slumped, and Juan got a closer look at the component boxes. Every one had physical signage: NO USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS WITHIN.“

—Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End

For many people, a key component of open source is the license that is attached to the project. But what is a license, and what role does licensing play in open source hardware? This chapter covers the different types of intellectual property (IP) and the basics of IP licensing with respect to open source hardware.The good news is that most hardware is born open. Unless it is explicitly covered by a patent, most hardware is available to be copied, improved, and built upon by default. This chapter is written from the perspective of U.S. law. Of course, this chapter is merely an introduction to the topic of licensing and should not serve as a substitute for legal advice. It’s always a good idea to talk to a lawyer before making specific licensing decisions.

Licensing

A license is permission to do something. Usually, that permission is conditioned on some sort of behavior or action. For example, a movie theater owner obtains a license from a studio to show a new movie. In return for permission to show the movie, the theater owner promises to pay the studio a percentage of the revenue generated by ticket sales. Because the movie studio owns the copyright in the movie, if the movie theater owner decided to show a movie without a license from the studio, the studio could sue the theater owner for copyright infringement.

Critically, if you do not need permission to do something, you do not need a license. In the movie theater example, the theater owner needed permission from the studio to show the movie because the right to show a movie is one of the rights that flows from owning a copyright in a work. However, the theater owner does not need permission—a license—from the studio owner to discuss the movie with her friend. That is because copyright law does not prevent people from discussing movies, so having such a conversa-tion without a license does not open the theater owner up to an infringement lawsuit.

There is one additional twist on needing and giving licenses. A license is only worth something from someone with the power to grant it.The theater owner does not just need permission to show the movie—she needs permission to show the movie from the studio that owns the movie. Getting permission from some random person on the street will not be much of a defense when the studio decides to sue the theater owner for copyright infringement.

Finally, although many people think of licenses in terms of intellectual property, they are actually much broader than that. A driver’s license is permission to drive on roads, conditioned on passing a driving test and maintaining a reasonably safe driving record. A concert ticket can be thought of as a license to enter a venue and attend a show, condi-tioned on paying money.

In the context of open source hardware (OSHW), most of the licenses involved will relate to intellectual property rights. By and large, these licenses will grant permission to do things like copy, incorporate, and build upon existing projects.

Open Licenses in the Context of OSHW

It is probably safe to say that the GPL and Creative Commons (CC) licenses are the best-known existing licenses among people interested in open source hardware. That renown is well deserved. These licenses and their brethren (which can loosely be thought of as „open licenses“) have helped to build a massive common pool of writing, photography, films, software, and countless other types of creative expression. At the same time, they have helped to raise awareness about copyright more generally. Because of this success, they are worth considering specifically in the context of open source hardware.

The real genius of open licenses is that they take something that was viewed as a barrier to sharing and turn it into an asset. As will be discussed in more detail later, one of the unique aspects of copyright is that it protects automatically. If you create a type of thing that fits within the scope of copyright (like a movie or a piece of code), it is protected as soon as it is created. This copyright protection happens regardless of the creator’s interest in protecting his or her work under copyright. That is why a license is so important, even for works that no one really wanted to protect with copyright in the first place. Without an explicit license, anyone trying to build upon that work is potentially infringing upon the creator’s copyright. Remember, if you didn’t include an open license for your files in GitHub (or wherever you store your files), they are automatically protected by copyright to the fullest extent possible. Merely making the files public is not enough to make them open.

Instead of seeing this automatic protection as a barrier to sharing, open licenses view it as an opportunity to promote and encourage sharing. Using an open license is an affirmative declaration in support of building a commons.

An open license can also be used to force others to share. Remember, open licenses are built upon a legal right: copyright. That foundation allows creators to sue anyone who does not comply with the conditions of the license for copyright infringement. Including a „share alike“ provision in a CC license is not a polite request that anyone who builds upon the work contribute back to the commons; rather, it creates a legal requirement. This legal requirement helps bring people and companies that do not care about building a commons into the world of sharing. If they want to benefit from the commons by copy-ing, building upon, or integrating the commons into their own work, the open license can legally compel them to add to it as well.

Adding hardware to the mix makes things a bit more complicated. The legal requirement that forms the foundation for GPL and CC licenses is copyright. For things that fit easily within the scope of copyright—music, movies, photographs, and so on—this does not pose a problem. But for things that do not fit neatly within the scope of copyright—hardware being the most important example in this book—that copyright basis for traditional open licenses can complicate things.

The fact that hardware is not protected by copyright does not mean that it is impossible to license. It just means that the process is not as straightforward as adding an open license to the design. In thinking about licensing open source hardware, it is critical to understand what you are actually licensing—and what you do not have any power to license.

Copyright, Patent, and Trademark: Rights That You Might Be Able to License

Before considering the parts of a given project that could be licensed in an open source hardware way, you must first understand a little bit about the different types of intellectual property. Being able to identify the contours of each will help you to understand which rights you might actually have and how you might want to license them. Copyrights and patents are designed as inducements to create. The theory is that, in return for spending the time and energy creating something and sharing it with the world, the creator receives a limited monopoly on that thing from the government. Although they are often lumped together, copyright, patent, and trademark are actually complementary sets of rights.

Copyright

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that most people encounter on a daily basis (Table 3.1). In large part, this daily interaction flows from the types of things that copy-right protects and how a work qualifies for protection. Copyright is intended to protect „creative“ works. Generally speaking, creative works are the types of things that you would expect an artist to produce. However, in the con-text of copyright, creative works are defined fairly broadly. The category goes well beyond things like sculptures, paintings, and songs. Copyright essentially protects any slightly creative thing that is written down—notes to yourself, doodles on a pad, the finger paint-ing of a child. It also protects software code as a „literary work“ in the same way that it protects a novel.

As the name implies, copyright is primarily concerned with copying of the works that it protects. While plenty of other actions are regulated by copyright (for example, publicly performing a protected work, even if it does not create a copy, can violate the copyright), as a general matter copyright violations occur when a protected work is copied without the permission of the person who owns the rights to it. This copying can take the form of literal copying (e.g., duplicating a movie file) or nonliteral copying (e.g., turning a novel into a movie).

Getting a copyright is easy. Copyright automatically protects the types of works that fall within its purview.While there are many reasons to register your copyright, a covered work is protected from the moment it exists („fixed in a tangible medium“ is the technical term). That means that everyone is the owner of thousands, and possibly tens of thousands of copyrights—whether they want them or not.

How long does that protection last? For quite a while. For most works, protection lasts for the entire lifetime of the author plus 70 years after his or her death. The reason so many of us feel surrounded by copyrights is because they are so easy to get and last for so long.

Patent

Whereas copyright focuses on artistic works, patents focus on „useful articles,“ which are things that do stuff1 (Table 3.2).You can think of these as the things that engineers produce. For most potential open source hardware projects, „things that do stuff“ will form the heart of the project. For that reason, it is likely that most of the important parts of the project fall within the scope of patent law, not copyright law. Unlike with copyright, just because something is protectable by patent does not mean that it will ever actually be protected by patent. To obtain a patent you need to apply for it—a process that costs both time and money. In addition to filling out paperwork, you will need to prove that the thing that you are trying to patent is novel, meaning it is actually new in the world.

If and when you make it through the patent application process and are granted a patent, that patent will last for 20 years. While 20 years is a long time, it is significantly shorter than a copyright’s protection (the creator’s lifetime plus 70 years).

Finally, patent law and copyright law are mutually exclusive. In other words, something either fits within the scope of patent law or it fits within the scope of copyright law. In cases where an object seems to combine both creative and functional parts, the law does its best to separate the two elements out. The goal of this process is to avoid giving copy-right protection to functional items outside of its traditional scope.

Trademark

In contrast to copyrights and patents, trademarks are all about identifying goods in the mar-ket and giving consumers‘ confidence in what they are buying (Table 3.3). If you have a headache and run to the pharmacy in search of some painkillers, you want to be sure that the bottle marked „Tylenol“ actually came from the Tylenol people. Perhaps just as important, if you buy the Tylenol bottle and something goes wrong, it is important to know that you could sue the Tylenol people for harming you. What is critical about trademark is that it is a way for a manufacturer to identify itself in the marketplace.

Trademark is also limited in important ways. At their core, copyrights and patents are about copying or reproducing. Trademark law does not really care about copying for the sake of copying. Rather, trademark law cares about using marks in commerce and confusing consumers.

That means that not every use of a trademark qualifies as trademark infringement. Using someone else’s trademark in an attempt to pass off your product as theirs is trademark infringement. But using someone else’s trademark in a comparison or as a descriptor is not trademark infringement.

For example, using the „Arduino“ trademark on a microprocessor that I create myself will be trademark infringement: A consumer might (wrongly) think that Arduino was behind my microprocessor as well. In contrast, describing my microprocessor as „Arduino-compatible“ may not be trademark infringement. In this second example, I am using Arduino’s trademark to explain a feature of my own board, not to suggest that Arduino made it. It would be pretty hard to tell a potential customer that my microprocessor is compatible with Arduino without using the word „Arduino,“ and the law recognizes that fact. Similarly, I can use the Arduino trademark for comparison—“My microprocessor is five times slower and ten times harder to use than Arduino“—without running into trade-mark trouble.

Finally, the process of getting a trademark is something like an easier version of getting a patent.You still need to apply for the trademark and fill out forms, but the process will probably be easier and faster than a patent application.You may still need to hire a lawyer to help you with this process, but the bill should be significantly lower than the bill for a patent application.

Actually Licensing a Copyright, Patent, or Trademark

The previous discussion of the general types of intellectual property is all well and good, but if you are reading this book, you are probably a bit more interested in their application.

Licensing a Copyright

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, copyrights are the type of intellectual property that most people think of first. Copyrights are easy to get, so almost everyone has some. Also, because software is protected by copyright, copyright forms the core of the open source software movement. It is only natural to try and draw parallels when thinking about open source hardware.

But hardware is different, and not just because it is tangible. Because the core of most open source hardware projects is some sort of functionality—which is excluded from the world of copyright—copyright may not actually protect very much of an open source hardware product.

Of course, this does not mean that nothing in an open source hardware project will be protectable by copyright. Obviously, any software you include in your project is protect-able by copyright and should be licensed accordingly. Many (but not necessarily all) design files will be protectable by copyright as well. Also, in most cases, nonfunctional, decorative flourishes are exactly the type of thing hat is protectable by copyright.

For example, the Evil Mad Scientist iavolino development board has a cool de-sign screened onto its backside (http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu itinykitlist/180-diavolino).That design does not contribute to the actual working of the board; it would work fine without it. But it is a nice artistic flourish—exactly the type of nonfunctional flourish that is protectable by copyright. In contrast, the mostly functional designs on the front of the board that identify the pins and various components are much less likely to be protected by copyright.

Thus the nonfunctional design elements of your project may very well be protected by copyright and, therefore, licensable under existing open licenses, such as Creative Commons. That protection will not extend to the functional parts of the project, however.

If you are looking for a good rule of thumb about which parts of your project might be protectable by copyright, ask yourself what would happen if the part in question disappeared. If the project still works as expected, the part is probably protected by copyright (or totally unnecessary and should be removed, but that’s an entirely different discussion). If the project stops working, or stops working as well, then the part may be the kind of functional element that is protectable by patent.

Licensing a Patent

At first glance, patents seem to be at the core of open source hardware. After all, patents protect things that do things—that’s hardware! And if patents are to hardware as copyrights are to software, then the key to licensing open source hardware is to find a way to license the patents.

While reasonable on its face, this impulse breaks down in practice. First, as discussed earlier, just because something is the type of useful object that falls within the scope of patent does not mean that it is actually patentable. To get a patent, you need to prove that the thing itself is novel. For many projects, that simply will not be possible.While it might be a new open source hardware project, there may be plenty of earlier examples that would prevent it from actually being patentable.

Perhaps more importantly, even if your project could qualify for a patent, getting a patent is expensive in terms of both time and money. Obviously, this is a barrier to open source hardware projects that are bootstrapping or that do not have easy access to patent attorneys. Of course, these descriptions apply to many hardware start-ups.

There is also another barrier to obtaining a patent that is unique to open source hard-ware. One of the things that makes open licenses like those maintained by Creative Commons so popular is that they allow people to give away rights that they acquired for free. Everything that yo can license with a CC license is protected by copyright, whether you like it or not. For many people, the fact that they made no effort to secure the copyright protection makes it that much easier to release it to the larger community.

Patent fundamentally shifts that calculus.You need to take affirmative, expensive steps to get that patent. Obtaining a patent with the specific purpose of broadly licensing it to the community can make the financial commitment a hard one to justify. This is especially true when other ways to share with the community—namely, not patenting your hard-. ware at all and doing a good job of documenting the project—are so much easier. For many projects, obtaining a patent will be like building an expensive cage to trap a wild animal just so that you can turn around and set the animal free again. It is probably easier for everyone to just keep the animal—and the invention—free from IP restrictions in the first place.

In many ways, this lack of automatic protection is a great strength of open source hard-ware. Open licenses were originally designed to circumvent a defect in the law—namely, the problem that copyright was automatically locking up creativity for the life of the author plus 70 years. In many cases, that defect does not exist for hardware. Most hardware is born free, and anyone is free to copy it unless the creator goes out of his or her way to protect it.

Unfortunately, this freedom inherent in hardware—in so many ways a positive thing—also comes at a cost: virality. Because there is an existing right (copyright) that requires permission for copying, that permission can be ‚given conditionally. You are allowed to copy a copyrighted work under an open source license as long as you allow people to copy your work on the same terms. This factor has helped the idea of sharing spread be-yond communities that care about sharing for its own sake and into communities that just need to access the stuff. Without an underlying patent, however, it will be harder to pull that second community—the one that doesn’t care about sharing but wants access to the stuff—into the world of open source hardware.

Ultimately, only two types of open source hardware projects are likely to be interested in getting patents. The first are projects attached to institutions that have a process in place to patent everything as a matter of course. In those cases, because the patents already ex-ist, it makes sense to find a way to openly license them.The second are projects backed by individuals or companies with lots of money who feel truly passionately about open source hardware. In those cases, the value of having a viral license that can spread the ethos of open source hardware will balance out the costs of actually obtaining the patent. If you choose to license your patent, you should talk to a patent because each case is different.
Licensing a Trademark

In the context of open source hardware, a trademark may become the most important type of intellectual property. This is because of the trademark’s ability to identify the source of a product in the marketplace. The source is not only who conceived of it, but who actually assembled it and stands behind its quality. Even if you cannot control how people copy or incorporate your project into their own, you can control how they identify it.

Let’s turn again to the world of open source software to see how this works. Mozilla owns the trademark for the Firefox web browser. Because Firefox is an open source browser, anyone can take the code and adapt it to their own purposes (e.g., Ice Weasel is a version of Firefox for the Debian operating system). However, while anyone is free to take the code, they cannot take the name along with the code. Only Mozilla’s version of Firefox can use the Firefox trademark.

The result of this is that if you, as a user, find a Firefox installer online, you can be confident that it will install the Mozilla version of Firefox. It does not really matter where you find the installer—on Mozilla’s own website or on some third-party site. As long as it is branded as „Firefox,“2 you know that Mozilla stands behind the browser.

The same is true, but potentially even more so, in the world of hardware. Someone who is getting ready to buy a piece of open source hardware wants to know who de-signed the product, just as someone who is getting ready to download some open source software wants to know who designed the software. But that open source hardware cus-tomer also cares about who actually assembled the product. While anyone can compile a software package with essentially the same result, two different people can assemble an identical piece of hardware with very different results.

For this reason, controlling the trademark of your open source hardware project can be very important. Although you will have to come to terms with people creating poorly made versions of your product (it will happen), passing those poorly made versions off as coming from ou should be a different matter. Registering your trademark helps you to build a reputati n for quality and reliability by giving you the ability to make sure that only products t at are up to your standards get to use the name.

This does not mean that you cannot license your trademark to others. In theory, you could license your trademark under the same types of terms that you license copyrights or patents.You could allow other parties to use your trademark as long as they complied with conditions that forced them to share their derivative in the same way, or to not use the mark on commercial products.

In practice, it probably makes more sense to hold your mark a bit closer to the chest. Remember, a trademark is your project’s identity in the marketplace. People will rightly assume that anything identified with the mark came from you and is up to your standards. If they find that not to be the case, it may undermine their confidence in everything that you do. If you choose to license your trademark, you should talk to a trademark attorney, because each case is different.

What to Do Now

By this point in the chapter, you may have concluded that the licensing issues surround-ing open source hardware are a bit more complicated than those surrounding open source software. If you haven’t, you haven’t been reading that closely. Unlike software, which is automatically and completely protected by copyright from the moment it is typed out, hardware is a mix of possibly copyright-protected elements, patent-protected elements, and entirely unprotected elements. As a consequence, it is unlikely that we will see an easy-to-understand, widely applicable, commonly agreed-upon license for open source hardware soon.

Fortunately, this does not mean that all hope is lost. Remember, the core of open source hardware is about sharing. Regardless of the license you do or do not use, sharing means documenting and engaging with the community. The truth of the matter is that your time may be better spent documenting your project than trying to figure out how to license each and every part of it.

That being said, licensing is important. It can make your intentions clear and give people confidence that they can build upon your project without creating a legal trap for themselves. The easiest part of licensing your hardware will probably be finding an open copyright license that has terms with which you are comfortable. To the extent that there are copyrightable parts of your project (including software), using the license you find will give people permission to use those parts of the project with legal clarity. This is a good first step, but you need to be realistic about what the copyright license does and does not cover.

No copyright license can cover the functional parts of your project. That means com-ing to terms with the fact that people may copy or build upon the functional parts of your project without complying with your copyright license. If they do, it is your responsibility to respond in a way that accurately represents your actual ability to control the use of your project. If someone is copying functional parts of your project in a way you do not approve of and all you have are a bunch of copyrights, don’t threaten them with a copyright lawsuit. That’s a threat that you can’t back up—and it is an obnoxious one to make. Don’t be that person.

Once you have your copyright house in order, you will need to think long and hard about patents. In most cases, patenting something just so you can license it openly will not make financial sense. But if you decide to go that route, make sure you choose an open license that is written specifically for patents. Simply adding a copyright license to a patent will just create confusion.

Finally, consider obtaining a trademark. In many ways, your trademark will become your identity in the marketplace. It will allow you to control how others perceive your project, and possibly whether people develop confidence in it. It takes some money and effort to apply for a trademark, but in many cases it is well worth it.

Summary

Where does this leave us? The good news is that most hardware is born open. Unless it is explicitly covered by a patent, all hardware is available to be copied, improved, and built upon. That puts hardware well ahead of software. The less good news is that licensing hardware is more complicated than licensing software. It may be a long time before there is something as simple and all-encompassing for hardware as a Creative Commons or GPL license, because the basis for licensing software is so much more straightforward than the basis for licensing hardware.

Where does that leave you? First, take the time to document your project. Regardless of whether the hardware is protected by intellectual property regulations, documenta-tion is a big part of what separates open source hardware from hardware that merely lacks intellectual property protections (and go read Chapter 14,Taxonomy of Hardware Documentation). Second, if your project has parts that are protected by copyright, pick a permissive license. This makes it easy for people to use your project, and it gives them guidance on how you would prefer they use it. Third, a trademark may end up being the most important type of protection for open source hardware projects looking to scale up. Being able to show the world that your hardware comes from you can go a long way in building your reputation and an enthusiastic community for your work.

Resources

Here are resources from which to learn more about the topics discussed in this chapter.

Resources from the Copyright Office Copyright Office

Resources from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office about Trademarks

Trademark Basics: http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/index.jsp

Trademark Process: http://vvww.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/TMIN.jsp

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1. In addition to traditional „utility“ patents, you can get design patents, which are something of a middle ground between a copyright and a patent. They protect nonfunctional parts of objects, but only for 14 years.

2. And the person who put the installer there is not a trademark infringer peddling counterfeit ver-sions of Firefox.

About the author

Michael Weinberg is aVice President at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit digital advocacy group in Washington, D.C. As part of its advocacy mission, Public Knowledge has pushed to introduce the concept of open source hardware to policymakers and members of Congress. Michael oversees PK Thinks, Public Knowledge’s in-house think-tank, and is involved in a wide range of issues focusing primarily on copyright issues before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and emerging technologies such as 3D printing and open source hardware.

English: Here the first episode of the video series „FFFS – Fixing Funding For Sustainability“ – a video series to improve the funding of global sustainability. This first episode is about grants. If you prefer reading over watching scroll down to the transcript.

What to do with this video?

This is for us. Do you know a funder who does something like this? Maybe you applied somewhere and you experienced something along these lines? Well, let them know. Send them this video. The idea is: Sustainability activists can talk to their funders like „unions to employers“. Let’s be a decentralized union and send this to our funders and push them towards collaborative approaches to funding instead of competitive funding. Let’s together fix the funding of sustainability for more sustainability impact.

. . . . . . . . .

SCRIPT
. . . . . . . . .

Hi, my name is Lars Zimmermann. And this is FFFs – Fixing Funding For Sustainability, Episode 1.

– TITELSCHILD –

And today I am going to talk about Grants or similar funding sources for sustainability. Grants you have to apply for – that ask you to send in an application or proposal.

Broken Grants

Let’s look at an example. Very often these grants work like this: An institution has some money and wants to give it to sustainability projects. Let’s say it is 1000 Euros.

– TURM AUS 10 LEGOSTEINEN –

And they make people apply for it. The application is a bit complicated. Let’s say, it takes 4 hours. When we say each hour of work is worth 25 Euros then each application is worth 100 Euros.

– EIN LEGOSTEIN NEBEN DEN TURM –

This is 100 Euro or 4 hours the initiative already has! But instead of using it for real sustainability activities like saving bees, planting trees or do whatever – they use it so create a proposal! It is 4 hours or 100 Euros that are taken out of sustainability, for now.

Grants consider themselves successful when many people apply! And the world of sustainability is full of people, projects and organizations that need money. So in the end let’s say 50 initiatives apply.

This sums up to 5000 Euros!

– 5 TÜRME MIT JEWEILS 10 LEGOSTEINEN –

These 5000 Euros or 200 hours is not money or time that has gone into sustainability. It has not saved birds, challenged pollution, developed new green alternatives. No, it was used to write about what should be done instead of doing it.

Write about what should be done instead of doing it.

And then one initiative gets the grant. So 1000 Euro go into sustainability!

But in exchange 5000 EUR go out of sustainability!

– LEGOTÜRME WECHSELN DIE SEITEN –

So we have a final result of – minus 4000 Euro for sustainability. 4000 Euro that are burned! Our grant – that might actually wanted to support sustainability – actually had negative impact. It effectively took out energy out of sustainability, slowed it down.

I have seen this so often. Even with numbers crazy as these.

This is broken. Right?

. . .

Let’s have a closer look: WHAT is broken, WHY is it broken. And how to fix it.

Excursus: Cost Externalization

This dynamic is a case of externalization. Externalization of costs! Externalization is a classical problem especially for sustainability!

Let’s do a quick excursus on externalization!

– SZENENWECHSEL: Lego Fabrik, Tafel, Dorf –

Let’s do a quick excursus on externalization. A simple explanation.

Externalization means: When you produce a product there are costs attached to make it like materials, energy, work. You have to pay something before you can profit from selling the finished product.

Externalization means that you make others pay these costs! Wherever you can.

Here is a classical example: Imagine a factory in the woods. It produces a good. And on by-product is polluted toxic water. It is expensive to clean the water or hire someone for it. So instead of paying this the factory releases the toxic water quietly into the river. Problem solved, money saved.

And there is a little village along the river. And the toxic water makes the people there sick. They have to stay at home and rest in bed. Instead of going to work an make bread or whatever there body is busy dealing with the toxins. Also they need expensive medication. Now there bodies become the filter for the water! They become the filter mechanism!

These costs for their time and the medication are costs attached to making the product. But not the factory is paying these costs. But the people here in the village. The factory has externalized the costs to the village.

They pay. The factory only benefits!

– SZENENWECHSEL: WIEDER ZURÜCK –

This is what we do, when we pollute and exploit the planet. Others pay. Or will pay. For example future generations. Or you at a later date.

“Evil” capitalistic companies are great at externalizing costs in order to maximize profit. And this is why we need sustainability after all! Dealing with and cleaning up after externalizations is maybe the major reason for sustainability.

And here we have grants that want to do something for sustainability and they use the very same mechanism! Contradicting their mission.

(((I mean, if we have a process like that in the world of startups for example – no problem. Let’s filter them out. Who cares if we have more products? But sustainability? I think there we can take anything!!! Or almost anything! We don’t need ONE bee initiative. We can have one in every village. Use the exact same mechanism – externalization – to deal with effects of externalization?)))

How so? /

Before we come to ideas how to make this better let’s first understand what is the issue here – what is the problem.

Bad & Better Filters

What is their – the grant givers – problem?

They have money and they want to give it to someone who is doing relevant things. How to find and identify this someone? They need to find and filter! But this – finding and filtering – comes with costs. If you look for something specific. You need to do research.

And this mechanism here externalizes these costs to the initiatives. They have to write a proposal. And present themselves according to the questions the grant has. All of them.

– AUF DIE LEGOTÜRME AUS SZENE 1 ZEIGEN –

They spend all the time to pack something up – customized for the specific unique request of grant – and the grant giver can cherry pick.

This is absurd high costs for giving away 1000 Euros. Paid by them – the initiatives. Not them – the grant givers. They (the grant giver) benefits – “aren’t we cool! We give/gave money to sustainability!” – and one of the initiatives benefit. But all the other 49 initiatives paid for it! And in the end it is planet earth!

Media = Organization = Collaboration

WHY is this so? Why are many or the majority of the grants are doing this?

Well, there is a good explanation for this. It used to be the best way – in the world before the internet. How?

In a world without internet? How should you learn about all the small initiatives? They can’t buy adds in newspapers or print 1 Million postcards and send them around or buy or air time on TV or radio.

So you buy this airtime once and become visible to all the initiatives – and they send single (and therefore cheap) letters to make themselves visible.

So in that days you asked THEM to send things TO YOU. From the periphery to the center. This was the cheapest way for all.

– ZEIGE VON DEN KLEINEN STEINEN AUF DEN GROSSEN –

But the world has changed! We have now the internet. And let’s say since at least 2010 it is ridiculous quick, cheap and easy to set up a website! In less than a day. So the small initiatives can all set up websites. And make themselves visible to the world. Permanently.

And then the institution can do the work. Use a search engine! And find them.

– ZEIGS –

Of course. You might ask: All these websites, they look so different. And many of them are really low in quality! Some of them have barely information on them. The websites don’t help to make a decision.

It could work like this:

The institutions posts about a grant and announces that it will browse the web for websites of initiatives looking for this, this, this and that information on a website. “Please post it under ‘About’”. This is the structured proposal! Instead of sending it to us post it on the web. And here are some suggestions how to set up a simple website quick and cheap.

This would already do something good. Because many initiatives have websites that don’t explain well what they do because they are busy explaining it in hidden grant applications instead. So you help them to set up a good and useful website!

This creates the benefit that they can use this website also for others things. It is easier for the public to see what is happening here and also – and here comes the beauty – also for other grant givers.

– ZEIGE DAS MIT MEHREREN DUPLO TÜRMEN –

Let’s say you are a big and really influential grant giver or group of grant givers. You could create some kind of open standard! For information provided about an initiative. Create a way better ecosystem of visibility! And everyone can build on it. Plug into it. An open standard – like a CV or example.

Inquiries

And then you find one you like. And of course you have additional questions. You need to know more specific things.

And then you ask these few initiatives to write a more detailed proposal for you. But you give them already a little bit of money for that! You pay them to do this!

This is how you internalize the filter costs. And don’t exploit people that want to create a sustainable planet. You money goes 100% into accelerating change and not to a significant portion into destroying change.

There are a few grants that work a bit like this. But why not way more!

More Ideas!

Ok. If you reflect a while on this you will find a lot of interesting angles, further questions and from that extra ideas on top.

For example an open database or list where every initiative that has set up a website can add themselves. So the institutions don’t even have to browse the web. But can go straight to that list.

Imagine what kind of sustainability dynamic this could unfold.

With Openness (in the form of an open information standard and open available information) and smart use of the internet we can make things a lot better.

End

Well, this was FFFS – Fixing Funding For Sustainability Part 1.

Stay tuned for more broken things and ideas how to fix them.

My name is Lars Zimmermann and I have a bunch of cool projects you can check here:

– ABSCHLUSSBOARD BLOGLZ.DE –

Bloglz.de

Blog Lars Zimmermann d e.

–––

(Missing I really wanted to add that some grant givers even ask for Videos or Pitches – sometimes even in special formats like Pecha Kucha – which increased the costs of the application dramatically and there for takes even more time out of change making. /// If you like conspiracy theories you could argue that some of these grants are actually on a secret mission: taking out energy of/slowing down sustainability progress.)

EN Here is a 10min explainer video on Open Source Circularity – what is it and why do we need it? If you prefer reading over watching you can download the script here. It is also on Facebook in case you like to share it there.

From the video:

Utopia

… Open Source Circularity – that sounds like world worth living in.

* It is a world that invites our creativity and intellect.

* A world that supplies us with what we need. Without having countries invading each other for resources. Because if we don’t burn resources or turn them into garbage there should be enough for all.

* It is a world that preserves nature and the biosphere. In such a world nature remains beautiful and rich everywhere.

* And it is a world that will provide us with a lot of free time! Because for a working circular economy we also need to consume much less! Therefore less production is needed. Which frees up or time. For other things.

* And it is a world where we are enabled to express our freedom and are not surveilled or controlled by large companies using the products around us.

An Open Source Circular Economy … well … that sounds like the best positive utopia I know.

Introduction: Why Fixing Funding For Sustainability?

„If you try to give humanity a future it is likely you’ll pay this with your own.“

Why a project to fix the funding of sustainability? Well… The short answer is: capitalism can’t fund sustainability. The core of our current capitalistic economy is to exploit our planet. Extract resources and pollute land, sea and sky! Whoever can do it quicker and cheaper wins the competition run.

So naturally capitalism is not the way to get things done with sustainability. You may say that you know examples where it is the opposite – where capitalism works for sustainability. Yes. At the fringes there are some. But don’t get distracted. Many of them are just a market diversification – another story to sell a new product. It is not a change of course.

Some waves dance into the opposite direction of a moving ship – because the ship is moving forward.

If the main source for funding does not work in favour of sustainability this means that sustainability needs other funding sources. And that it needs to allocate the little funding it can find very effectively.

Getting funding is basically the equivalent of being allowed to work on an issue. I have seen people trying to work on real sustainable change. The majority lives extremely precarious lives! If you try to give our planet a future it is likely you’ll pay this with your own. An even bigger group of people i met would love to work in sustainability but can’t find funding or opportunities at all. Only those who blow up the planet are fed well and stay secured.

So this series is about finding ways how we can enable more activities in sustainability. The problem is not that people don’t want to do something about sustainability. The problem is that we fail to provide them with the opportunities to do so. Let’s bring more energy into sustainability!

I started this series out of my own experience when I tried to get my work funded. I am an artist often working as an economist in the field of sustainability – I tried to get funding for my work from sources for sustainability. So I have seen things. Which made me come up with this series and the project behind it.

FFFS Episode 2: Science Won’t Help

EQUIPMENT:

TEASER (SHORT VERSION):

Often things like that happen: There is a sustainability project. Activists. And a scientists and wants to get engaged with the project. And the people in the project think: Yeah! Help is coming. But then they realize: The scientist is not a help. Because he or she is not in the business of sustainable change making. He or she is in the business of RESEARCHING sustainable change making. Which is a different thing.

Script Sketch

And this episode has a very clickbaity title: It is called: Science is useless for sustainable change! Or no. It is called: Science won’t help. But it is useless.

It is.

It’s not.

It is.

It is.

Of course, yes, not completely! But more than you might think.

/// CUT ///

Not A Lot Of Funding For Sustainability

The main problem is, that we don’t allocate really a lot or enough money for real sustainable change.

I live in Germany. And here we spend a lot of money for films [research & add number], for theatre [research & add number] and soon even for computer games [research & add number]! All of these things produce art – they produce results. State funded broadcasting too! They produce, what they get the funding for: movies, performances, games, radio and so on.

But we don’t have anything like this for sustainability! I mean for real sustainability action. For groundwork. For people getting their hands dirty and trying to do really hard work.

Sure. There is money – there are budgets – going into sustainability. But if you look really closely you will notice that huge parts of it – if not the majority – goes into science! There are many ministries and researchers and research projects on sustainability. True. A LOT! There are even a bunch of places where you can study sustainability.

/// CUT ///

Science is useless for sustainable change

I am active in the “sustainability world” for some time now, creating projects and meeting others with projects and I learned a bunch of things. And a really surprising unexpected thing was: How incredible useless scientists are for real sustainable change!

All the money that goes into science – and if it is the majority – is burned! It is not helping to make sustainable change.

/// CUT ///

First when I started my projects I was happy when there was a scientist popping up in a project. But now I think: Ough.

Of course. It makes sense. As a scientist you are supposed to be objective! You can’t be what you research. You have to be outside. You need to keep your distance.

/// CUT ///

And secondly: As a scientist you are trapped in the science system! And the currency of that system is not change. It is research papers!

You write about something. And when one paper is finished – one idea, one theses, one result – then you move on to create the next one – maybe an entire different one! You don’t test your results. Or try to implement it.

If you do that… trying to implement – you are stupid! You risk your career.

Because working in science Is really really hard. It is highly competitive. You have to work crazy hours. And produce papers – many of them. And if you don’t – and you try to do some real change instead, you are unreasonable.

Science is a crazy treat mill. That spits out people that actually try to become activists – and push sustainable change!

And if you step out. There is no other funding opportuntiy. You crush.

/// CUT ///

Over-researched and under-developed

This is why sustainability is over researched but underdeveloped.

I got approached by several scientists that want to research sustainability and asking me to point out initiatives to them. There are so few, struggling hard, failing, not finding the money to work on their projects. And they are surrounded by the scientists like flies.

/// CUT ///

And I thought: Hey people. Don’t! Don’t produce a paper about the sad little pile that is there. Rather invest your time and help building it – make it bigger. Why research this. Build something instead!

But they can’t. They are trapped in their system – science – that does not allow them to become really active if they want to be able to pay their rent and feed their kids. > If you try to give this planet a future you are likely to pay this with your own.

/// CUT ///

More Public Funding

Ok. How to fix this?

First of all. It is nothing wrong with science. It is beautiful. I am not an enemy of science! All the funding they have should stay there!

But we should be aware, that the money that goes into science for sustainability is not money that goes into sustainable change. And if we take that out of the sum. We see, how little funding there is for sustainability change.

/// CUT ///

And my proposition is that we need something like we have for movies and theatre. We need something money for sustainability activism! Activism! Utopia-production! Campaigning. Education. Work that is not businesses. That does not have to be self sufficient. Like movies, theatres and public radio wouldn’t be the same if they would need to sustain themselves.

A Ministry for practical, applied sustainability.

Activism! Action! Not Science. Because science does not help.

/// CUT ///

Science is useless for change.

Reprise: Science is not useless

„Science is useless“ the title is a bit clickbaity. To get your attention. But of course it is not true. Science is important and can help:

* To evaluate solutions (what works and what not)
* To collect data to base solutions and decisions on.
* To collect and create knowledge for sustainable solutions: better tech!
* Talk to politicians (sometimes).
* And a bunch of other stuff too.

/// CUT ///

But the real fight or main for sustainability does not happen in these realms.

The real fight happens in the realm of convincing people. Getting their attention. Make things thinkable! Figuring out how to place a sustainable solution somewhere. Educate people. Developing products for the market. Hacking companies. Make it happen! That is where sustainability really happens. Well.

And in that realms it barely happens that science is a real help.

/// CUT ///

So let’s allocate more funding for this!

And how to do that – for this I recommend to watch the other videos and follow this series called: FFFS – Fixing Funding For Sustainability!

Ok.

My name is Lars Zimmermann.

And if you want to find out more about my work. And this video series. Visit my Website:

BLOGLZ.DE

/// SHOW SIGN ///

End remark

This video is licensed under CC-BY-ND! Because it reflects a point of view. However. Feel free to cut it together with other stuff. As long as you don’t make me say things I have not said I will not come after you!

Script Sketch

And it is about repurposing existing money streams for sustainability – through some minor adjustments or additions to an existing system. If you like to say so: a hack.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Sustainability? Boy, let’s need to face it: for this we need to produce and consume much less. It is consumption that harms the planet, but it is not necessary what makes us happy. At least in the western world we can consume much less and still have a happy or even happier life.

Where do all the products come from? They come from places where people work! It is employed people who take resources out of the ground, produce and sell stuff and pollute air and soil. People with jobs. Killing the planet is the side effect of many if not most jobs.

NOTES:

EXPLAIN: that we need more people out of jobs. But we are afraid of this because we don’t really have an answer in society how keep ppl. busy then and most importantly how to distribute wealth without labour.

We need to develop a positive story for this first. Make ppl. that do not work and consume less offers for green lifestyles – how to deal with free time and a live with less stuff and consumption. We could create for example a positive and more mainstream discourse around repairing, hacking and networking etc.

How/Where to start?

In some countries on the planet we have social security nets. In Germany we have something the public calls Hartz IV. If you are unemployed for a while you will get money from the state to cover your rent, health insurance and basic life expenses. It is really not much! But if you live a life with little consumption you can get by. Living a life with little consumption is … a sustainable life. It is not the poor that “fuck up” the planet.

The problem is, that it is not possible to spin a positive discourse around this. People on social care are forced to feel bad about themselves – society forces them to feel ashamed of themselves. Often they are put under enormous pressure. The problem is: This leaves no space to create a positive discourse of the sustainability of their lifestyle. And this leaves no space to explore this sustainable lifestyles in a positive way and develop them further. It is basically a huge research field for a happy life’s without labour and crazy consumption.

So let’s hack this! Social care is state money that already goes into supporting sustainable lifestyles and the research invention of it. Or at least: Let’s use it like that. By seeing it like that and promoting it like that. Can we reallocate that money? Declare it “Funding Sustainability Research”. Yes. We can.

Here are a few ideas how to start this. I am sure you can add more.

* Create a magazine (online and offline) with the “green spin” addressed to ppl. on social care. Show them how to enjoy life sustainably. Repair things. Spend time in nature. Cook healthy and sustainably. Do sports. Urban Gardening. Be healthy and happy and social. Allow them to be proud. Then deploy this magazine into the social care offices. Give it out to them in front of these buildings. Lay it out at political events and so on.

* // Add maybe few more ideas before shooting or elaborate on the one above //

//// PREPARE (?): Set up a website with this magazine, produce the first issue. Invite ppl. to contribute articles. Share it around. On top of the website is the video. Make it something ppl. can pick up. ////

///// MAYBE (?) … It could be funny to end the english version of the video with playing “Lithium” by Nirvana the first verse. Black background with white lyrics and in the “Yeahhhh” part show green forests and images of green lifestyles, carrots and so on. Then end it. :-)

I’m so happy because today
I’ve found my friends
They’re in my head
I’m so ugly, but that’s okay, cause so are you
We’ve broken our mirrors
Sunday morning is everyday for all I care
And I’m not scared
Light my candles in a daze
Cause I’ve found God – yeah

FFFS Episode 4: ‚The Medium Is The Message‘ or ‚Send Cash Not People‘

Script Sketch

And this episode is called “The Medium Is The Message: Send Cash, Not People”

It is mostly an episode about conferences.

Most of us have been at conferences. They are important for the education of adults – post university – and also for a bunch of other things for example networking.

And of course there are some on sustainability or related topics.

I know a bunch of people that fly around the globe from conference to conference on a sustainability mission.

/// PLAY WITH A MODEL PLANE ///

They land. Stay in hotels. Talk for an hour or less at the conference about the problematic state our planet is in, and what they found out how to fix it. Then they meet a bunch of people with the same life-style while eating sophisticated catering food before they board their next plane – off to the next conference. To repeat all of this. Throughout the year.

Seems a bit …

The Medium Is The Message

One of the most famous quotes of the last century is by the philosopher Marshall McLuhan.

The quote is “The Medium Is The Message”.

And what he meant by this is that it does not really matter WHAT you say using a medium. The deeper and true message is in the medium itself, it is in HOW you say it.

You can go on national TV and claim how disconnected and isolated everyone is from everyone else in the country. If you broadcast this on national television it is obviously not true. The country experiences itself as connected in the same moment.

You can paint a colourfull picture showing a world where everyone is blind and can’t see pictures. But obviously this story gets into the brain of the recipients when they look at the picture! The true message is that picture. Is pictures!

Conferences That “Lie”

So the same is true for conferences.

It is not important what people are saying there. The medium – the conference itself and how it is made – is the true message. The medium is the planes that fly around the speakers, the expensive hotels and sometimes crazily expensive and resource intense conference infrastructure that often becomes garbage when the conference is over.

The speakers don’t have to tell us how fucked the planet is. That message was already sent by the medium they use to speak to us. And they don’t have to tell us their story how they fix things. Because their true message – the message of their medium – says the opposite.

These whole conferences are a mediums itself pretending to send a message of sustainability. But the true message is the exact opposite when they are made unsustainable. A sustainability conference where the medium – the conference – is the message would look different, there wouldn’t be planes, luxury hotels and throwaway infrastructure.

I think.

OK

What has this to do with funding?

Well. When people start to set up these conferences there is obviously funding available. It is supposed to be funding to create a message of sustainability. But it is invested in hotels, plane tickets and so on. It goes into the opposite! Rendering what the conference wants to say a lie.

Can we take this existing funding and invest it in sustainability instead?

–

I have been a speaker at those conferences. I sat in these airplanes, I stayed in these hotels, I ate at these banquets and I projected my slides on these infrastructures. Why did I go? Because these conferences pay speakers fees! Speakers get money to speak. And these fees are an important part of my income!

The work I do with Open Circularity is incredibly hard to fund. This is the whole point of this video series: FFFS – Fixing Funding For Sustainability. And one income source is fees for speaking at conferences. It is a pillar of financing or enabling the work. And I know that it is the same for a bunch of these sustainability speakers.

How TRUE do you think my work with Open Circularity has been so far?

Fix It!

OK. How to fix this?

How to put this existing money into actual sustainability?

Well if you think about this for while and do some research – there are a lot of ideas out there how to set up conferences that are sustainable. Where the medium is the message. To many to list them all here.

But I want to give you at least a few to open your mind and convince you that thinking about it offers roads for at least different ideas.

For example:

* Whenever you have funding available … for your conference or whatever … give a bit of it to the people whose ideas you love and would like to see at your conference (maybe as a donation) – and give the rest to your local initiatives! No planes. No hotels.

* You could think for example about creating tandems. Connect the speaker whose ideas you love to a local person. Pay both! Make the speaker teach the local person his or her ideas so the local person can give the presentation. This comes with the side effect that you create a trained local agent of these ideas. And you force the speaker to find a way to deliver his or her ideas in a way that can be locally implemented and replicated quickly. Don’t create an entertained audience but a well informed ready to start something person. A more sustainable outcome.

* But this does not mean that you can never have a famous speaker at your conference. The british author Oscar Wilde was a famous speaker who travelled the world giving talks. He died 120 years ago. At that time there were no planes. How did he do it? He travelled the world and planned a tour. Going from city to city by train. Make people with interesting ideas go on tour. Provide open data about these tours and it would be easy for conference creators to create a great line up. Serendipity is the friend of creative insights!

* Don’t print posters, flags, cards, badges or order yourself one time infrastructure in the colours of your conference. There are smarter and much more sustainable design strategies for conference set ups like Pre-Use or Guerilla-Use… You can find links to these in the video description.

Or …

/// TAKE A BREATH AND A BREAK ///

Let me stop here.

There are more ideas how to use this funding for sustainability conferences to fund sustainability instead of plane tickets, hotels and throwaway infrastructure. Put it into the pockets of those who drive sustainable change.

I leave this open to you. I invite you to post ideas how to create GLOBAL EXCHANGE of sustainability ideas and education that do not involve planes, expensive hotels and 3 star catering but still full fill the human needs of status, interesting experiences, face to face conversations and networking.

Please share them here …. //// mmh? Do I really want to make them post something? If so where? ?? ////

And, if you are a local initiative and see a local institution set up one of these crazy unsustainable conferences about sustainability – send them this video / idea collection – if you like using an anonymous email address.

/// ADD END ///

–

/// ADD SOMEWHERE: When a british researcher meets a new project partner from Japan at a conference in South Africa it is very likely that the project they set up will be in need of more plane tickets… . ///

* Play this with some puppets and a lot of Ketchup maybe. Make it bloody :-) Splattery (?)

Script Sketch

NOTES:

* On my search for sustainable change a simple answer/model came up for the question: What forces are actually changing or shaping the world? Sustainability obviously isn’t.

* The model or answer begins with reading Shakespeare or history of royal families or even simpler: watching Game Of Thrones.

* There you can see, the people who are in power were willing to kill everyone in their way for that power – to make it to the top! Killing people! Close to the top you are surrounded by people who are willing to kill to make it to the very top. And this means – when you are at the top – you are surrounded by a lot of people that want to kill you! All the time. And will, if you don’t outsmart them all the time.

* Imagine that stress. Most people – including myself – are not willing to take that stress. I rather don’t be at the top then! Most are not cut out for this. But the point is. There are people who are!

* You can think of them as an unstoppable force! Pushing everything out of the way. And do everything that is necessary to get to power! Do and deal with everything necessary! The “will to power”. It is this unstoppable force that at the end of the day is shaping the world!

* You can find this in Shakespeare, the history books and <smile> Game of Thrones </simle>. These are the people in power. That shape the world. And it is their fights that shape the world.

/// MAKE A BLOODY MESS WITH KETCHUP. VISUAL MESSAGE: POWER IS BLOOD. | POWER IS CARBON. ///

Selling Things Works Better Than Killing People

* Well in today’s world and the world of let’s say at least the past 70 years killing people wasn’t always the best strategy for this unstoppable force to get to the top. There was and is another strategy: It is selling things!

* If you sell a lot a lot of products to people you will make them give THEIR money to YOU. You will make a lot of money. And in todays capitalism money means power!

* So in our current world – this unstoppable force – that is willing to do EVERYTHING necessary – is focussed on: getting resources out of the ground, transform them into products, deploy them everywhere; and make this whole thing as fast paced and as extractive as possible!

//// MAYBE EDIT IN SOME OF GEORGE CARLIN?

Or more funny “puppet” references from the TV series “I Robot”(1)| (2) ////

* That is why you have so much cheap stuff around you. Because in its core it helped the people who want to be powerful to become powerful. (And with many of these things they wanted that you wanted this.)

* So in terms of funding. When money is in the hands of the powerful and they are powerful because they want to become more powerful – they are more likely to invest this money into extracting even more resources to sell even more things and exploit the planet even more.

* So the force, that is shaping the world, the “number 1 force”, is on the opposite site of sustainability.

Fixing this? The Power Challenge!

* How to fix this?

* In this episode I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a fix ready.

* The only thing I got Is this question. A proposal for a direction in what look for an answer how to make sustainability happen.

* How can we channel that force – that wants to be at the top and is willing to do what is necessary for it – towards sustainability? What systems can we set up? What manipulations can we make to the existing system or systems?

* This is the power challenge! Create Channels where this will to power is focussed on sustainability because sustainability is a strategy to raise to the top.

* … a system where you get power because you repair and reuse and avoid…

* … this goes out to those, who have this unstoppable force in them …

* … I am looking for ideas. This is a call for ideas. …

/// Make the final bit a bit more round and celebrating, add something, dance around the key question by saying it 10 times each time differently … something is missing. ///

/// Add: Probably/maybe a place where ppl. can discuss this ideas or where they can send them in. ///

/// Not sure: When it makes sense to make a bloody mess in the end take a shot of all the ketchup blood and adjust to colour filters of the video so that red becomes green. ///

Script Sketch

/ NOTES

The key idea of that episode is to explain, that it is very costly to make the economy of a country switch to a green one. And risky. The GDP might go down.

But let’s gamify it. We ask the richest people of this world – philanthropists like Bill Gates – and also countries to all put together money. We collect a sum of 1 Trillion Dollar! 1 Trillion! As prize money.

It will go to the country as first reaches certain sustainability standards. Very high standards. That will take a while to achieve.

1 000 000 000 000 !

(Why:)

(People like to talk about money especially about big sums! They understand this. Money can be the vehicle to make them talk more about sustainability. 1 Trillion is an insane number. Newsworthy. Let’s dream about getting it!)

(People like competition. What sustainability strategies will make countries be frontrunners in the race for the 1 Trillion?)

(1 Trillion might be enough to take a risky road where you might end up with a not profitable economy for some time but a sustainable one!)

//// FOR THIS EPISODE: Set up a website for this project: 1000000000000.world that looks like the official website of this project. It explains the goal of the project and has an info-page for funders that want to contribute to the pot. Make it good enough that it looks decent and like a real campaign/project on first look. And the publication of the video is the publication of that website! ///

°

°

License: CC-BY-ND

These scripts are licensed under CC-BY-ND! Because it reflects a point of view. However. Feel free to cut it together with other stuff. As long as you don’t make me say things I have not said I will not come after you!

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]]>Turn Failed Sustainability Startups Into Fertile Soil/Humus For New Ones – By Making Them Open Sourcehttp://larszimmermann.de/turn-failed-sustainability-startups-into-fertile-soil-humus-for-new-ones-with-open-source/
http://larszimmermann.de/turn-failed-sustainability-startups-into-fertile-soil-humus-for-new-ones-with-open-source/#commentsWed, 15 Nov 2017 22:23:04 +0000http://larszimmermann.de/?p=4670EN

I have this idea for a while now and after my first interaction with the sustainability startup accelerator Climate KIC in Milan yesterday I decided to use the time on the train back to Berlin to finally share it. It starts with the question: How to make quicker progress with sustainability in the world of Startups? Here is an answer:

9 out of 10 startups fail in the first 3 years. This happens for many reasons: not the right time, not the right place, not the right team, not the right idea/solution, not the right context, and more…

The lack of quality of the solution is only in few cases the main reason. The solution might be good but the startup fails anyway for one of the others reasons. But when it has failed often the fully developed solution (a working prototype or even complete product) gets buried on some hard drives first and is lost a little later completely when those hard drives are buried. The entrepreneurs are busy with other things.

This is sad for sustainability reasons. Because a lot of time, money and energy has already gone into the development of the solution. Many technical problems were solved, many questions were answered. But this knowledge and the possibilities attached to it get lost on these buried hard drives. The progress that was made for sustainability is gone again.

Maybe the reason for the fail really was just bad timing and the same idea would work beautifully one year later or in another context. But the new team has to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. And a lot of energy is already used up when they get to the point where the others have failed. This dynamic is really bad for sustainability where we need to be quicker and smarter. This is – as said – unsustainable itself.

So here is a simple idea for that: How about a fund where startups that have just failed or are about to fail go to and ask one more time for some last funding. They receive something between 5 000 to 10 000 Euros and this money is used to document the solution extensively and put it online under an open license – in short: they OPEN SOURCE it! Make it possible for others to study, build upon, distribute, make and sell the solution. To bring it to live after all.

The fund or institution behind it supports that process. It makes sure everything is done well, helps with the licensing questions and ensures that the data is well spread (on several platforms!) and promoted.

This could be fantastic! The solutions of dead sustainability start ups become humus for new ones:

(1) Some solutions really might get picked up by a new team with a fresh perspective.

(2) Often probably just parts get reused by other startups, for example the choice of materials or collected data.

(3) Maybe large companies pick up some solutions and end up becoming more sustainable.

(4) Even completely new ideas can be inspired and made possible for example when different solutions are combined with each other.

(5) Or maybe even the entrepreneurs themselves finally find a way to make their idea work with the opportunities of Open Source!

This “graveyard” of open sourced sustainability startups/solutions could be a fertile ground for a lot of new flourishing live and fruitful activities for sustainability.

For an institution or accelerator with the goal to support sustainability through startups this could be a very smart way and an opportunity to make more and more lasting impact. Sustainability is about opportunities for complex ecosystems!

How this would work in every detail is not for me to flesh out here. Whoever picks this up will have their own ideas anyway. But it is for sure an interesting path to explore! And I was really happy to learn in Milan, that within Climate-KIC the discussions if patents really make sense when we want to save the climate have begun! A real sustainable circular economy will only work with Open Source solutions and here we have a great angle to start this from. Instead of throwing things away (dead start ups) make sure they can be reused using Open Source.

And I just want to add that me and my colleagues from the OSCEdays and Opent It Agency are here to help with the “proper Open Source” part – here from Berlin to (literally) the other side of the globe (New Zealand).

This August in 2017 we were invited to the WORLD EXPO in Astana Kasachstan to present the work of the Open Source Circular Economy Days. I met fantastic people there doing great work. But I also got a bit sad when I walked through the city. I discovered one of the worlds biggest sustainability problems – a problem I have never heard or read about: Cities not built to last.

I did not take pictures there. But I did a little image search on the internet. Click HERE, HERE, HERE or HERE and zoom in to the pavement and the little walls to get an impression. I saw things that were much worse than in this images. And of course I have also seen examples not that bad. | Image credits: by Flickr User: Ben Dalton, CC-BY

Astana became the new capital of Kasachstan in 1997. Since then the better part of the city was built – from scratch! And especially for the EXPO 2017 a lot of new infrastructure was added just in the last months or weeks: futuristic buildings, public places, shopping malls and so on. Dave discovered that the paint on the walls of the space ship shaped conference center we were presenting in was still wet!

Naturally everything is a bit out of proportion, often empty or unused and lacks a “soul”. The “soul of a city” emerges – as my colleague Sam put it – when many people with many different ideas use and shape a space over time. So no surprise there was no soul – yet. And also not a problem. It will emerge in the coming decades. The lack of soul was not the part that made me depressed.

What made me depressed was the incredible poor quality of construction I saw everywhere – it was how the city was built. A lot of the fresh and new things there were already broken – built broken! I saw a park with benches from stone – not older than a few months – and each bench was already broken. I counted the stones and bricks used for the sidewalks, walls, fountains and so on: 4 out of 5 were damaged (they must have come out of the factory like that already). Things fell of everywhere: I walked by buildings younger than 10 years but you could not go inside using the regular staircase because that staircase was already ruins – this reminded me of pictures of decomposing greek temples that are thousands of years old. But the first IPhone is older than this building!

Why is that? I think one of the problems is probably the huge span of temperature in Astana. Extreme winter cold alters with extreme summer heat and this puts a lot of stress on infrastructure. But the bigger or maybe real problem is probably another: When you put up a huge city like this that quickly with construction methodologies and materials that haven’t been around for centuries in your culture it will be impossible to find enough properly educated and skilled construction workers, craftsmen, factories and planners. I imagine that a lot of the construction is done by untrained people trimmed to work quick.

From a sustainability point of viewthis is an incredible disaster. Building a city is extremely energy and resource intense! Imagine all the steel, glass and stone mined, processed, transported and installed… And try to imagine the pollution, exhaustion, CO2 emissions and climate effects attached to this.

When everything is built broken you will have to fix or replace it quite soon – using new steel, glass and stone … Sustainability would mean to build things to last.

Today 3,5 billion people on this planet live in cities. Researchers predict that by 2050 it will be 7 billion. This would mean that 50% of the city infrastructure that will be around in 23 years will be built in the coming two decades! The amount CO2 emissions that goes with this equals already the total amount we are allowed to produce by the Paris climate agreement if we want to keep the “2 degree goal”. But we have not feed, clothed and transported the people on the planet then yet and we have not heated their houses or equipped them with technology. All of this would come on top.

So it is already over capacity. And then, when the new cities are built in a quality that makes it necessary to redo them just after a couple of years the problem gets worse – it becomes a real disaster. Let’s build things at least to last and therefore sustainably.

I am not sure if this is really a global issue. I hope not. I have not been to one of the new cities in China for example. Not all parts of the globe have to deal with the same extreme temperature differences as Astana. But the key problem: the lack of qualified planners, factories, craftsmen and construction workers might exist in other places too.

If you were a sustainability activist or sustainable startup pioneer in that parts of the world you would think about taking on this problem as it is certainly one of the real big sustainability problems on earth right now! You could run campaigns, do lobby work and set up schools, seals and certification processes to educate people to demand and install better quality construction. You can do this as an activist or as a company! It should easily be possible to fund this work. High quality goods are understood everywhere.

(The headlines are a summary or very short version. A suggestion for a new circular economy definition is in the second part of the text. Discussions and progress on this are probably located here on the OSCEdays forum. )

The existing definitions do not reflect what we want.

Why do we want a new definition? Because we were not happy with the existing ones – provided by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation for example. They lack statements about sustainability and do not include social factors. They don’t represent what we want to work/fight for.

But what is this?

I think we should be clear, that the world and humanity can survive without a circular economy or sustainability. Sure, likely the planet will be much darker. But humans are good at getting used to things. And happy moments are possible even in weird circumstances. So it is not about “survival”.

But what are we for?

I think it is “beauty”. We want beauty! We want to live on a planet we find beautiful. But beauty is of course something subjective. Here is what I grasp is the common ground in our little open group on beauty.

(1) We like a nature and biosphere that is rich in structure. What is alive in species and biotopes today we want to see alive also in the future. Free and abundant!

(2) We are not afraid of complexity. And we think that being respectful, humble, open, caring and enabling to the things around us is key to this No 1.

(3) We want a tolerant plural society in which humans can feel save and express themselves freely in a growing, complex, sustainable world.

The second point – being humble and caring – is a logical consequence of the first one – preserve diversity. The third one just restates number one and two for society.

So everything in one sentence: I think we want – and this is maybe our “circular economy” – a world:

“… where systems are designed in order to let the possibilities for as many other systems grow – short and long term (biological and technical systems).”

The sentence might not be too good. But it is clear: It is about caring, thinking ahead (about consequences) and try not to undermine the ability to exist for all things on earth. And existing means to be able to develop.

I think this is what we want to see expressed in our definition of “Circular Economy”. (And we think “circular economy” is the right approach because a lot of the techniques that are usually connected to it look promising for this goal.)

But what we want is not necessarily best called “Circular” Economy.

But let’s step back for a moment and admit that with this we are creating maybe more a mission or vision statement than a definition. (Update: This is also true for the great CE definition of Metabolic) And: If you agree so far – at least mostly – you have to admit: It does not make too much sense to call this “circular”.

This is also “circular” (graph 1):

Start – Use – (Re)Use – Trash. One loop is already a circle.

Create, Use, Use again one time and trash it, just one loop. But only one loop is already a circle!

Is “circular economy” really the right term to express a vision of an enriched world?

We should continue to say “Circular Economy”.

Stay with me for a moment in the argument. I will not end with suggesting to discard “Circular Economy” and replace it with a new term. But his would not be smart! Because:

(1) Establishing a new term is hard, unlikely and time, energy and resource intense.

(2) We would exclude ourselves from the existing and emerging political and economic debates around “Circular Economy” where real change might become possible. We should rather continue to „hack into“ those debates by adding new concepts to it „Open Source …“

(3) Also it would be wasteful itself to throw away all the work that has gone into establishing “circular economy” and not try to work with it.

But just for the sake of insight follow me through the next paragraph:

But take a moment to understand that “Spiral” or something like it is/could be better.

A spiral (or funnel) could better express that ideally each activity in the system increases the number of possibilities for everything after. There is constant change and iteration – to the better.

Each action increases the number of possibilities for all actors in the system.

Something like this could be very inspiring! If you think about something “circular” it does not sound like too much fun. It sounds like you have the same amount of things you had before. But “spiral” means you have more afterwards! This is probably more appealing to larger audiences! Mainstreamy!

But “spiral” doesn’t work too good either. It is not really catchy. Or logical. What is the “line” in the spiral? It is even less self explanatory than “circular economy”. It is not the poster child for a successful marketing campaign.

How to express the idea of growing options that do not harm existing options visually? Or even in words? I don’t know. This one is not doing the job either – But it would be great to have something that expresses the core idea: Do only something where you have a at least more than 2 or X good ideas what happens next with it. Always!

The term “Circular” economy isn’t perfect. But we would need a term that is magnitudes better in expressing our “idea of beauty” to make it worth wile and a probable success to push for a change. And it would be stupid to make the whole field more complicated with another term. So let’s stick with “circular” and try to load our ideas as meaning into it.

And this is somehow natural. Let’s jump to the next angle to look at this:

So let’s Define our “Circular” Economy like a “Spiral” Economy.

If you look at this picture one more time (the circle with just one loop).

Start – Use – (Re)Use – Trash. One loop is already a circle.

This is not a circular “economy”! It is a circular process! Or rather a circular step in an otherwise linear process.

An “economy” is something other than a single process. It is an immeasurable high number of processes – dynamically (!) intertwinedto an unbelievable degree of complexity! There is constant change.

In a dynamic environment how to make sure that one process will be able to close a loop? You have to make it fit to connect to as many other processes as possible – so it get’s at least likely an actual loop is realized! The more connection options a process has the more likely it is that a connection can be found. If your output is “oxygen” you will be fine.

Yes! Your processes and systems need to be designed in a way that their outputs are useful for many other and different processes and systems, or in other words:

“… in order to let the possibilities for as many other systems grow – short and long term (biological and technical systems).”

Because our economy is dynamic and complex this is the only viable strategy if you really want to make circles happen. And this is basically the same as our vision/idea of beauty. ヽ(^。^)ノ

And one strategy to make it likely that your process finds another one to connect is not to destroy other processes or systems – because this would undermine unexpected use(r)s. Add. Don’t take away.

And another strategy is of course Open Source – as it provides the information necessary to find a process and the legal opportunity to use it.

Ok. Well. Then let’s put all of this into our definition. And add open source right there. And make sure we are talking about a global circular economy. If we spin the definition like this it could turn out like this:

(ΘεΘ)

Definition 0.3

A Circular Economy is an economy where systems are designed in order to let the possibilities for as many other systems grow as possible – short and long term (biological and technical systems).

To reach this goal it favors and explores – where it makes sense to reach it – concepts, techniques and strategies like:

・circular flows of resources, products and processes;
・fair and free environments for people to live and work;
・local and short feedback loops;
・use of standards;
・use of (non-toxic, clean, nourishing and healthy) materials that are either technically recyclable or biodegrade;
・products and processes designed for

Update: A Reprise

sorry, just a little bit more.

A part of my brain of course still thinks about an alternative word for “circular”. I have another idea. I don’t advocate for it (it did not feel like a Eureka moment). But I still want to share it – because it is interesting!

The best replacement word I found so far is “Pre-Use” – The Pre-Use Economy. This is probably why I am so enthusiastic about the term ever since I heard it. It expresses the whole idea that you should have at least one other idea about an alternative future “use” of something before you start using it that is not throw it into the garbage. Pre-Use invites complexity and to think ahead and to think about others (because why should you be the one doing the next use?) It is a basic operation that can be spread to everything: You pre-use the planet and nature!

And what makes it so interesting: If everyone would include this BASIC OPERATION on a daily bases – for example in a shape like:

Don’t do anything before you don’t have at least 3 positive ideas about what happens afterwards with it.

– a circular economy would emerge very quickly. *

_
* The techniques and tools from the definition above would help to discover these 3 positive uses.
** And btw. IPO Tables could be a great tool to make this 3 positive ideas visible.)

]]>http://larszimmermann.de/circular-economy-spiral-economy/feed/1Pre-Use – ‚A Perfect Term & Operation To Let A Circular World Emerge‘?http://larszimmermann.de/pre-use-circularize-your-surroundings/
Sun, 03 Sep 2017 08:15:04 +0000http://larszimmermann.de/?p=4360I came across a very good term to explain and explore circular design and inspire research about it. The term is „Pre-Use“. I published a blogpost with a lot of practical examples on the Mifactori Website.

It was a busy summer with lots of other stuff happening (for example our trip to present OSCEdays at the EXPO2017 in Kasachstan). So there was only time to develop and write down a Scenario and provide sketches for a number of city hacks. But I hope it is interesting enough for now. I’ll try to find funding and collaborators to make some of these things happen:

The IPO tables project has been quiet for a while as other projects needed our full attention. But the project was always in our mind because it looks like the perfect tool and collaboration method for an open circular economy in our eyes. And many people we told about the project in the past years expressed a big interest in it becoming a reality.

It was fun to do this at the event! Especially to hear the positive feedback and the excitement expressed by the OSCEdays community when they understood the idea. The needs they expressed for their work helped us to remember all the fantastic use cases and problem solving skills of a fully fledged IPO tables software.

Fueled with this energy we sat down already the next day to implement at least some of the most urgent changes into the public prototype and get also the website ready to go now for further funding applications.

We are happy about everyone raising their hands to join the team and help us. And test test test :-)

In March 2017 I started an open project to develop an open instruction poster about circular making that can be downloaded and hang up everywhere to inspire makers to invent circular products and processes.

After a longer and very inspiring open collaboration process the poster was finished in a first version in June 2017. You can DOWNLOAD it in several languages (and maybe also new designs) from HERE.

EN: SUMMARY:Make a business with urban food gardening and create a corner stone for the sustainable and circular transformation of our cities. —> I wrote a well received article for the blog of „The City Is Open Source“ presenting an idea for a transformation of our cities through little urban gardening startups. Read The Article Here.

]]>Our Digital Future, Or: With Design-Thinking To Hellhttp://larszimmermann.de/build-the-digital-world-of-tomorrow-or-with-design-thinking-to-hell/
http://larszimmermann.de/build-the-digital-world-of-tomorrow-or-with-design-thinking-to-hell/#commentsMon, 05 Dec 2016 19:10:08 +0000http://larszimmermann.de/?p=3915I was invited to participate in a one day workshop by an agency some consider to be amongst the leading digital forethinkers in Germany. The subject was digitalization and the networked city. I went there hoping for & expecting an inspired afternoon with good and forward thinking and inspired ideas. Sadly the opposite happened.

Instead I felt shot back to 2005!

It was:

As if Snowden has never happened.

As if Trump has never happened.

As if we had not seen Facebook using their data to run psychological experiments how to modify the behavior of its users.

As if there aren’t new records for DDoS attacks every other month (in their latest edition with Internet Of Things flavor – created by toasters and video cameras).

I was & I am still stunned and frightened by an almost complete absence of critical thinking and dangerous naivety in the room: ‘Let’s just collect data about everything and send it to everywhere. Awesome!’

They come up with ideas like:

‘Let’s connect sensors to our body that send real time data to a lab that then composes the perfect diet for our body and delivers it to our door in the cultural flavor we like.’

I think they would disagree that this is less than a step away from the movie Matrix:

In Matrix human bodies are the energy source for AI-machines. They are feed well and are provided with a perfect illusion of a real life.

Yes! Let’s nuke away some mountains so we can grow organic broccoli!

They brainstorm ideas how to integrate work and free time ever closer for more efficient use of our time. And the next minute they make remarks about their burnouts and therapies. But they don’t make the connection between the first and the second.

These people are payed to create the future of our digital world. And they seem to lack completely the real challenges we are facing for that.

…

In a recent discussion someone showed me the research that because climate change is so complex and frightening the natural reaction of people is to simply exclude it from their world view. We are just stupid cows in a herd looking to the cow next to us. I guess the same is true when it comes to surveillance and the other real complex problems of the internet.

But why must this be true for the people who design the systems?!

At the beginning of the workshop someone said, that Germany is really behind in digitalization and far away from pioneering. No wonder! If the people in charge of pioneering trying to be better in being Silicon Valley than Silicon Valley itself.

But we are in Germany. We are in a good position to invent a different kind of digital future. We have a problematic past to learn from. We have fantastic organizations like the Chaos Computer Club and Netzpolitik.org, die Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte and many more. We have with Berlin a city that is one of the freest in the world. Germans aren’t afraid of complexity! We are good at thinking things through. Germany could be the place where we build digital tools for a world we really want to live in!

It is creatively lazy to think about creating data about everything and sending this data everywhere. If you start with that premise ideas for new services and products come quickly and cheap. Of course you need also a lot of ignorance for the problems this creates. But it will help if you are comfortable throwing around phrases like: ‘more efficient’, ‘emotionally appealing’ and incredibly still popular ‘3 d printing’.

But this will not do anything good! More likely the opposite!

So why not start differently and take more difficult questions and premises into account?

Design things that work without producing and collecting data – that can be traced back to an individual. See data minimization as a way to beauty!

Think about solutions to overcome the gaps in our society and allow diverse communities and understanding.

These are just 3 problems to start from. Good solutions starts with the right problem. Don’t be afraid people!

Products

The sad thing is: the Internet of Things will come. Not because customers need it or ask for it. But because large companies need to innovate and sell new products. Therefor they will throw creative brains on the invention and marketing of those products till they found a solution.

The IOT-tech is there. And companies are desperately looking for ways to make it look useful.

Creating and using data about everything is a way for this. Sadly. And once all the data and the possibilities attached to it is there – well isn’t it fantastic how we can use it to control and manipulate ppl. to buy even more new things!

If you are a person hired to create those products. Please. It is possible to make less bad products – for example if you start taking the 3 points above into account (no data, no manipulation, no ‚filter bubbles‘). It is probably creatively hard and more challenging. But …

Appendix

Two only half related ideas I had in the WS. I liked them and I like to share them here in case someone wants to pick them up.

(1) The Educating Trolldrossel

Linus Neumann invented for his ‘Re:Fefe’ project the ‘Trolldrossel’ (‘dry out trolls’). If someone posted a comment the Trolldrossel did a simple language check. If it detected a possible troll comment the commenter got a Captcha. When it was solved another one popped up saying the solution was incorrect. This repeated … sometimes till the troll went away.

Building on this you could replace the Captcha with questions like ‘Have You Really Read The Article?’ or questions that teach people basic things about Non Violent Communication and similar things ‘How did the article make you feel’ and so on.

(2) ‘Totally Stupid Opinions From People’

A news portal with the name ‘Totally Stupid Opinions From People’. There you have normal news from all realms – extreme right, extreme left etc. The hypothesis is that people go there to get outraged about the stupidity of others. But they learn about other opinions as well.

EN: We are continuing our research on modularity for circularity. And we learned a very important thing: „Don’t invent a new modular system try to use (hack into!) an existing one“. There is an extended Blogpost about it with lot’s of images and details at the Mifactori Blog.

]]>Trumpocalypse … or ‘You got mail’http://larszimmermann.de/trumpocalypse-or-you-got-mail/
Tue, 15 Nov 2016 21:10:26 +0000http://larszimmermann.de/?p=3817I don’t have a unique point in this blogpost. Everything I say here is common ground… at least amongst or within … a certain filter bubble … But I’d like to restate it here to push this analysis.

2005 Clay Shirky reminded us that the invention of the printing press destabilized existing power structures throwing Europe into very bloody wars for 200 years (!) till we finally had figured out the new structure: the nation-state. And he said, it would take us 50 to figure out the new order of the internet. Well …

Almost all ‚old‘ media (newspapers, television, radio) worked hard against Trump. But he won anyway. I think Fefe is onto something when he says: This is a clear signal that they are now less powerful than social media. And the result we see is: Trump is president.

What was on my mind the whole day is what to make of social media then? What can we – as intellectuals – do?

The printing press brought in our culture the ‚hidden structure‘ of the democratic nation-state to the surface. What ‚hidden structure‘ will social media bring up? Trump is definitely a clear signal that existing power structures (yes,including things like ‚facts are stronger than everything else‘!) are erupted hard! That scares me. No wonder, given what happened last time – with the printing press :-/

So I wonder, what can we do with social media?

Update: I think I’d like to add that (1) Trumps ‚I will except the outcome of the election – If I Win!‘ ( = undemocratic view – now he is president) + (2) the whole NSA surveillance complex … well this are two signs, that it does not seem very likely that democracy will play a huge role in the coming/evolving structure …

Update 2: I posted this first on Facebook and got a variety of comments – most of them interesting. I’d like to quote my favorite one from Samuel Joseph:

“Like you said Lars, is signals a shift from corporate media dictating opinion and that a populist leader can emerge. Sadly not the person that country or the world needs. But I think it can galvanize people to start thinking about how outdated this system of politics is. So of if social media offers one thing, it is the ability to organize efficiently. However, it is also loaded with endless distraction and in itself doesn’t really amount to much without active building in real communities.”

_

Credits:

I am not sure, if he invented it, but just in case, the term ‘trumpocalypse’ i have from Sam Muirhead:

If you just want to click one link in this post after reading it make it this one:

a

]]>In The TIME MACHINE to the ‚Open Source Circular City‘ of 2050http://larszimmermann.de/in-the-time-machine-to-the-circular-city-of-2050/
Sun, 06 Nov 2016 22:24:43 +0000http://larszimmermann.de/?p=3803What was this for? Context provided at the end of the article (scroll down to Open Labs).

°

–

‚The Time Machine‘ To The Circular City

In a drawer somewhere someone found an unknown and unpublished chapter of H. G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ (1895). In this chapter the time traveller visits a circular city in the year 2052. Why did H. G. Wells never published the chapter? Probably it had way to much positive spin for his taste back then.

In this chapter the time traveller meets Alma a citizen of a circular city somewhere in Europe in the year 2052. They are walking through the street while having a conversation. Here is a small sample of the chapter:

°

(…)

ALMA: Yes, production has always been a part of the city. But with digital fabrication, circular economy and open source it got even closer to the center of the city. Today the city is our factory.

THE TIME TRAVELLER: You mean all the things around us were produced here? Hard to believe. The city would be pretty stinky then! And full of garbage.

ALMA: Well, it isn’t. We work in closed loops. Everything new is produced using something old. We have no waste or garbage but resource collection systems.

TTT: Where wood is chopped, splinters must fall!

ALMA: True. But we don’t have much of them and we don’t have them as garbage. Building entirely new things is something we try to avoid where we can. We rather repair things or reuse them. Our factories are mostly repair and refurbishing shops or facilities. We build long lasting things. That stay in fashion.
_

Alma pointed to the other side of the street where a young woman with rainbow colored hair was walking. She wore the exact same shoes as the time traveller: brown leather oxfords. The time traveller had bought from John Lobbs in London 4 years ago in January 1891.

TTT: I find this hard to believe. Look at the range of things around us! Who is supposed to keep an overview and know all of that!

ALMA: All our products and processes are Open Source. Information about them and all possibilities for them are freely accessible. We use mostly digital fabrication tools. They feed on this information. And enable creative circular reuse and reproduction. The objects themselves know their circular possibilities and share them. This way the possibilities grow.
_

The young lady with the brown leather oxfords stood now right in front of them. With a quick move Alma touched a little sign on the shoes. A colored moving image appeared between them showing the shoe and all kinds of information about it like ‚materials‘, ‚recycling info‘, ‚reuse opportunities‘, ‚building plan‘.
_

TTT: So basically everyone can look up all this information? Always?

ALMA: Yes. But it is still our designers who make the best use of it. They create new objects using open circularity information and adding to it. –

– It is the role of our designers to enable an open future. To build things that grow the possibilities for us in all aspects. To make a world that is renewable out of itself in unpredictable ways. –

– But it is true, the fact that everyone can look up all information did a lot of good to our democracy. It turned out that the possibility to learn about the objects in our environment and to influence them, made more people develop interest and practical understanding of the ecological circular processes around them. This made our democracy stronger and smarter. Thanks to open circular design.

TTT: How often do you change and rebuild the city then?!

ALMA: Well, this does not only depend on the will of the people. There are external forces at play! The climate on the planet has changed since your days. We have storms and floods destroying cities on a regular basis. And huge waves of refugees as a result putting cities under pressure. Open circularity enables us to fix, rebuild and adapt our cities quickly. And because of that have more peace on the planet.

The two walked down the street. At the next corner stood an object with the letters ‘OSCEKA’ on it. Alma stopped in front of it.

TTT: If you had a time machine, what would you do!? Would you travel to the future and see how all of the very same atoms here around us are shaped into an entire new city?

ALMA: No. I would take on of these object here – an OSCEKA – and travel to the past. The OSCEKA was the first thing that really made people understood Open Circularity, and inspired so many people to contribute and invent it further. If the OSCEKA had been around earlier, we would already be in this entirely new city today.
_

The time traveller looked closer at the OSCEKA. And as he did he started to understand everything Alma had explained to him. It started to make sense. Of course!

(…)

Sadly the manuscript ends here. I whish H.G. Wells would have described the OSCEKA in more detail. Now we have to come up with it ourselves. Quickly.

Ps. If could know at least what OSCEKA means. Maybe Open Source Circular Economy Killer Application?

(Post is a combination of this & this blogpost. | The text is released into the Public Domain. You can do whatever you want with it without worrying about attribution. I am happy about attribution though.)

Context

OSCEdays is collaborating with the Disruptive Innovation Festival 2016 running Open Labs on the Circular City. In a 3 week program we hope to brainstorm, discuss and implement ACTIONS for the transform our cities.

In The Time Machine To 2050

The first phase of the lab is dedicated to an open discussion, brainstorming and collection of ideas. I contributed to this ‚a missing chapter‘ of H. G. Wells The Time Machine written in 1895. It is a chapter about the Circular City and playsin the year 2052. I share this chapter also here in this blog to invite you to add to it! And to think about the Circular City and Open Source Circular Economy.

In the future all physical products and process in a city are designed for constant rejuvenation of the city out of the materials ( the atoms ) that are already in it. (Almost) no physical materials need to leave or enter the city. This is enabled through an open flow of information (Data) in the city and around the planet. Cities learn and research openly together ever better rejuvenation for their atoms:

From PRODUCTS IN & WASTE OUT to DATA IN & DATA OUT

From there it leads into the chapter:

Update

This is maybe a good idea to communicate ideas about the circular city. Do you have an idea for it? Feel free to share it as another episode in the conversation of ALMA & the TTT. Lets write collaboratively a full chapter about the Circular City!

During that time there will be several events and stuff happening – infact the whole event is an open and ongoing hackathon event! Come by and bring your project with a subject of ‘Open Source’ and ‘Circular Economy’ or ‘Future Economies’ or ‘Energy’ and join Lars and Valentina Karga (the other artist in the rocket at that time, great person!) in the space.

4 [City Hacking – Street Art – Sessions]

Lars actually met Joanna Szlauderbach (one of the three curators of Planet B next to Alain Bieber & Nicola Funk) last summer in a train after going home from a gig with ‘The City Is Open Source’. On that train ride Lars showed her the city hacking research work of the past weeks. And when she invited Lars to Planet B she asked to continue it there. And so we are going to have workshop about it here as well! The subject will be Modularity! Join us.

5 [More: Business Models & ‚Exhibition‘]

Lars will also run a workshop on Open Source Business Models for Circular Economy workshop and record videos for the Canvas. There is no definite date for the workshop. But if you are interested in it just shoot us an email and we will set it up. Potential dates are:

day 6, 8 or 9 (19.7 & 21–22.7)

We will also play a bit with the ‘exhibition’ concept in the gallery around the rocket whenever there is time.